Wednesday, November 30, 2016

This is a picture of a manuscript that I read nearly a year and a half ago, studded by sticky notes nearly too many to count. These sticky notes aren’t there to mark suggested edits but instead they mark places in the text that took my breath away, or places that taught me something I need and want to remember, or scenes that I simply loved, or confessions that triggered sober witness. Written by Carlen Maddux, a friend from my hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, this manuscript is now a book that has been recently published by the fabulous Paraclete Press.

Carlen, a journalist, takes the reader along his and his wife's path, and while their path is one through Alzheimer’s, the practical wisdom that emerges in their story can be overlaid on any crisis. The practical wisdom is applicable to life in general. Who among hasn’t faced circumstances that we wish were different than they are?

In A Path Revealed, Carlen learns what it means to take God seriously and personally. He learns what it is to lead, particularly to lead a family. He models what it's like to truly love your spouse. Self-help books in which the author has figured out 10 steps to living with [fill in the blank] and proceeds to teach in didactic fashion pale in comparison to this wise and personal journey hard-lived on every page.

Recently, I asked Carlen a few questions about the book, the writing of it, and the path through crisis, and he graciously responded.

This is your first book – why did you decide to write your story for a broad audience?

CM: While trying to develop my story line, I found two strong themes running along parallel rails: 1) Alzheimer’s and its potential for destroying a family; 2) The spiritual odyssey that emerged. I struggled trying to decide which was the organizing theme. Early on, I tapped a couple dozen readers for feedback; half of them didn’t know us. Each one of them told me that the focus of my story was this spiritual journey. Alzheimer’s was the context, they said. Developing this then as a spiritual odyssey moving through a life-threatening crisis immediately moved our story into an audience broader than one strictly interested in dementia. A clinical psychologist, who was one of my early readers, says this on the front cover: “This book belongs on the nightstand of every family coping with a crisis.”

In the book you wrote that your reporter instinct kicked in after Martha's diagnosis, driving you to try to figure out whether there was any way out of Alzheimer's. As you came to realize there was no way out of that particular diagnosis, what primary question, or questions, took that initial question's place?

CM: It was the most primeval of questions: HELP?!

How was journaling during this time instrumental in helping you find the way through this maze?

CM: I started a journal almost from the day Martha was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She was 50 at the time; I was 52. I didn’t begin writing a journal for “spiritual discipline” reasons. I did it to survive. I had so much information coming at me, and so many questions stirring up inside, that I needed a central clearinghouse. The idea of a journal instinctively arose. I’m glad it did. Soon enough, my thoughts and writings evolved into issues deriving from this spiritual odyssey. I wrote in this journal for a decade, consuming 14 volumes. My last entry was the day my wife moved into her nursing home.

How did the act of writing the book – even before you had a plan to publish it with Paraclete – help you achieve the wholeness that you referred to in the book's Prologue?

CM: Writing my book almost didn’t happen, I say in the Prologue. The raw material for the book had to be the journal I’d kept, and I initially found it too difficult to open after having closed it five years earlier. Somehow I got past that grinding feeling. As I read and scanned the 14 volumes in no particular order, story fragments began linking together. Not only that, memories of conversations and images were awakened that I’d not written down, helping me to add color and texture to our story. Fourteen years into our journey—about the time I started to write my book—I suddenly realized how far our family had traveled, and from where we’d come.

At the end of the book I open my Epilogue this way: “Only recently has the meaning of my walk with Martha at Gethsemani come clear to me, carved out like a statue in relief by the intervening years.” (A month after her diagnosis, Martha and I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky and climbed up a wooded hill.) I continue: “Our family has stepped over jutting rocks and tangled roots and moved through a wooded darkness speckled with light. We have stumbled onto sunlit clearings and paused at the wonder of it all, lingering with delight before turning back to the path set before us. Yes, ours has been a maddening and frustrating journey, disheartening even. Yet somehow this walk—our walk—has followed a sacred path, pointing our way toward a Presence far greater and more real than any entrapment by a disease.”

How does the path through your crisis help people who find themselves in their own crisis, whether or not it is related to Alzheimer's?

CM: That’s a question best left to my readers. Based on the feedback I’ve received, though, our odyssey has so many twists and turns, dead ends and fitful starts, and yet a hope and joy emerging from this milieu, that the story seems to connect at levels that are unique to a reader’s particular crisis. How that happens, I’m not really sure. I do know that they feel a certain authenticity with the pain, suffering, and confusion I share, and thus an authenticity with the hope, love, and joy that arose.

~~~

[Photo: taken of the many sticky notes that marked my reading of Carlen's manuscript]

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I offer you words from an old Swedish hymn of thanks, “Thanks to God,” or in the Swedish “Tack O Gud” (original Swedish lyrics by A.L. Storm; translated by Carl Backstrom; tune by J.A. Hultman). This hymn was often sung in the church tradition in which I was raised and which I’m still a part. Sometimes even a verse or two in Swedish was sung. I’ve always loved this hymn, its melody, the steady repetition of “Thanks for…”, and its acknowledgment that what is dark and painful often intermingles with that which is joyful.

Thanks to God for my Redeemer,Thanks for all Thou dost provide!Thanks for times now but a mem’ry,Thanks for Jesus by my side!Thanks for pleasant, balmy springtime,Thanks for dark and stormy fall!Thanks for tears by now forgotten,Thanks for peace within my soul!

Thanks for prayers that Thou hast answered,Thanks for what Thou dost deny!Thanks for storms that I have weathered,Thanks for all Thou dost supply!Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure,Thanks for comfort in despair!Thanks for grace that none can measure,Thanks for love beyond compare!

Thanks for roses by the wayside,Thanks for thorns their stems contain!Thanks for home and thanks for fireside,Thanks for hope, that sweet refrain!Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow,Thanks for heav’nly peace with Thee!Thanks for hope in the tomorrow,Thanks through all eternity!

For grace, hope, peace, and love, and for the giver of these, I give thanks.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

I've written about hope a fair amount in this space and some of you know it's the topic I'm exploring in a book-length manuscript, which hopefully means a future physical something with two covers and pages in between that can be held in one's hands. While working on it in small openings of time over a period of years, I continue to be struck by how much there is yet to learn. I look at notes I wrote 2, 3, or 4 years ago, or even last month, and have to stop and listen and absorb yet again, still more. It's like being in school at the beginning of a level II course and while reviewing what you've learned so far, you find that some of it has stuck while some of it dawns fresh or more fully and your eyes and mind open and you move forward just a bit further. Stay tuned.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a teeny tiny fraction of the beauty in my neighborhood right now]

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Here in the U.S., we’ve had a tumultuous week following a difficult election. The final result of our presidential election has sent many reeling and many celebrating. For me, the week with its weird combination of predictions and exultations was sobering and as possessive of attention as a strong vacuum.

In the midst of all the inner and online clamor, I read a social media post offered by artist and author Makoto Fujimura that struck me: "No matter what your reaction to this historic election, our response should be to cultivate the good, true and the beautiful.”

Yes to this, I thought.

Those transcendentals fit with what I have had in the margin of this blog for a long while: “Aiming at the intersections of thought, faith, imagination, and beauty in everyday life.” I'm recommiting to my pre-workday writing desk – a place where I've been absent too often for too long because I’ve been “too tired” or “too busy” – to attend to the entries on this blog that are yet to be posted and the pages of a new book* yet to be fully written.

All that is good, true, and beautiful surrounds us, waiting quietly to fill inner space and then be shared. God be praised.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you might do to cultivate the good, the true, and the beautiful in coming months.

~~~

*If you’re interested in learning a bit about the new book, I invite you to read the [monthly] email I send out to readers who ask to receive it.

Friday, October 21, 2016

A week ago today, my best childhood friend died suddenly. There we are in the picture above, sitting on a deck at our first summer camp–the two girls intentionally wearing identical bathing suits. She moved next door to me in the middle of grade school, and we were nearly inseparable after that: walking to school together, having sleepovers, attending the same church, jumping on our neighbor's trampoline, making clothes for our Barbie dolls and later for ourselves, learning to knit, writing and putting on plays, riding our bikes to the library and coming home with the baskets full of books, and so many other things. When my family later moved to Florida in the summer between eighth and ninth grade, we wrote letters nearly daily that first year–actual letters, on paper, by hand, sent with stamps. She came to visit, sometimes for weeks at a time. We were in each other's weddings.

But then adult life set in with work and families and budgets and we rarely saw each other, the last time about 12 years ago. There have been Christmas cards, the occasional but rare email, and Facebook. A couple months ago, though, she and I had a lengthy and meaningful private FB message conversation and as quickly as those messages could be sent, the friendship–always there but buried by time and distance and the changes that add up over time–flared and burned bright. Her funeral was yesterday, far from me, and I think of that conversation, which took place with her death no where in sight, as a gift.

As you've been reading this, if an old friend has popped into your mind, and he or she is still living, think about reaching out to them today and tell them they mean something to you. Tell them they had a share in shaping who you are for the good. Tell them they brought you joy.

~~~

[Picture: Can you spot the two girls with matching bathing suits? From a brochure for the summer camp we went to, Covenant Pines.]

Thursday, October 13, 2016

This poem was in a recent issue of Critique and it caught my attention. I particularly found myself thinking about the line, "We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes...." Perhaps your eye will land and stay on a different line.

Disturb us, Lord, whenWe are too well pleased with ourselves,When our dreams have come trueBecause we have dreamed too little,When we arrived safelyBecause we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, whenWith the abundance of things we possessWe have lost our thirst For the waters of life;Having fallen in love with life,We have ceased to dream of eternity;And in our efforts to build a new earth,We have allowed our vision Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,To venture on wider seasWhere storms will show your mastery;Where losing sight of land,We shall find the stars.We ask You to push backThe horizons of our hopes;And to push into the futureIn strength, courage, hope, and love.Amen.

Wednesday, October 05, 2016

"We do not always see that we should be moving about our days and lives and places with awe and reverence and wonder, with the same soft steps with which we enter the room of a sleeping child or the mysterious silence of a cathedral. There is no ground that is not holy ground. All of the places of our lives are sanctuaries; some of them just happen to have steeples."

–Robert Benson, from Between the Dreaming and the Coming True

~~~

[Photo: taken of an apple tree heavy with fruit, last weekend at Sweetland Orchard]

Aiming at the intersections of thought, faith, imagination, and beauty in everyday life.

Established 2004

"Thou takest the pen – and the lines dance. Thou takest the flute – and the notes shimmer. Thou takes the brush – and the colors sing. So all things have meaning and beauty in that space beyond where Thou art. How, then, can I hold anything back from Thee."
–Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

By day I'm a medical writer. After hours I do another kind of work. Creative writing, spiritual writing, essaying. This blog arises from those after hours. I write about work/vocation, meaning, hope, imagination, faith, science, creativity/writing, books, and anything else I feel the impulse to write about. I hope these short posts provide camaraderie for your own creative and spiritual life.